Deputy Chief Bryan Cox begins each day in the office checking the department’s job search portal, desperately searching for new applicants interested in the Cal Poly Police Department (CPPD). He then checks it once more at lunch and a final time before he heads home for the day.
Most days, his inbox refreshes leaving him with the result “no new mail,” but on rare occasions, he will get an interested applicant. The first thing he does when he sees an email is call them to learn more about them.
“I immediately make that first phone call so I can do everything that I can to expedite the recruitment process,” Cox said.
In the seven years Cox has worked with campus police, there has never been a staff shortage as severe as the one the department is currently experiencing. With six officer vacancies and one supervisor vacancy, a collective third of the CPPD needs to be filled.
The moment there is an applicant, Cox introduces himself and makes sure that the person is interested in Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, not Cal Poly Pomona.
“I want to see where they live because sometimes they accidentally apply to us instead of Pomona,” he said.
When Cox first started at CPPD, he heard complaints from people who applied to work at Cal Poly but never heard back. Cox decided that when he became in charge of hiring for the Cal Poly police, he wouldn’t let applications slip through the cracks.
The police departments at Sonoma State, San Jose State and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo teamed up to create a new website to advertise their job openings emphasizing the community-oriented police work that comes with working on a college campus.
The first thing you see when you enter the website is the quote “wear the badge, carry a community.”
“Cal Poly is committed to engaging with our campus community in a positive and productive way, where every interaction is an opportunity to build understanding,” the description for CPPD reads.
When clicking “view Cal Poly openings” the website goes to a new webpage showing two open positions; police officer and police officer cadet.
A police officer can expect to make anywhere from $63,720 to $86,820 annually. A cadet will make just shy of $43,000 a year, but Cal Poly police will pay for the cadet to go through the academy and complete all of the necessary requirements outlined by Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST).
According to CPPD’s only detective Steve Williams, he believes people are hesitant to apply to work as a university police officer because of the cost of living in SLO compared with the salary offered. He also attributes the lack of interest to the lack of “excitement” seen while working on a college campus.
“There’s not a lot that’s exciting on a university campus in the ways you would find in a city,” Cox said. “That’s not a bad thing. But it certainly affects who you’re going to get in applicants.”
Most of Cal Poly’s police officers’ day-to-day life includes responding to fire alarms, bike thefts and unruly skateboarders, according to the activity log. These are “minor” issues compared to those of a larger city, Williams said.
For Williams, these duties are added on top of his role as a detective and department range master where he oversees all firearms and ballistic equipment.
“I kind of have to put the investigations to the side and handle the calls for service because the calls for service are immediate priority and the investigations have to take a backseat to that,” Williams said.
However busy he may get, Williams said he prioritizes his caseload so victims feel supported and heard. The small difference is that he has to do his interviews in patrol gear instead of his usual suit and tie he used to wear to work before he took up patrol duties.
“I just don’t have time to change,” Williams said.
He said this affects people’s perception of him when talking to victims.
“People feel a little bit more tension and anxiety when they’re sitting across from someone wearing a uniform,” Cox said. “If you’re in professional attire, they tend to relax a little bit.”
Williams only plans to be at the station for a couple more years before he officially retires from law enforcement. Deputy Chief Cox said he realizes this and states that most of the officers who end up leaving CPPD do so because they’re retiring, moving locations or found another job elsewhere.
“If they decide to resign and move on it’s always been with good intentions,” Cox said. “And then the officers that are still working here, they understand that and they understand that we’re doing our best to hire replacements.”
Cox and Williams both don’t take it personally when someone leaves the department because they know they have their personal reasons behind why they left. And when someone retires they’ll throw them a retirement barbeque and give them a retirement plaque.
Cox personally attributes the lack of interest to the “anti-law enforcement movement,” as he describes, though he declined to go into further detail. The police shortage isn’t just an issue at Cal Poly; departments across the nation are experiencing this problem, Cox said.
Recent reports by Cal Matters and NBC News found that departments can’t find people who want to be police officers. These reports attribute this to low pay and benefits, police criticism and challenging hiring requirements among other reasons.
“There’s been certain social movements in our country like defunding the police, and negative narratives about law enforcement,” Williams said. “It’s created an atmosphere for many people who don’t want to do this job.”
When Williams first began his career in law enforcement he tested into the academy alongside 2,300 applicants. 16 were hired to go through the academy. These days, in that same county, they struggle to get 150 people to take the tests for an academy that has 50 spots, Williams said.
“You’re no longer taking the cream of the crop,” Williams said. “Things that used to be disqualifiers are no longer disqualifiers.”
While Cox is working on getting people to apply, the rest of CPPD’s officers are feeling the burden of understaffing and as they have to outsource to other municipal departments during larger Cal Poly events because they don’t have the bandwidth to cover it all on their own.
“For the UCSB soccer game, I believe we had representatives from Arroyo Grande police department, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s, San Luis Obispo police, Grover police and California Men’s Colony,” Cox said.
For Williams, working this game meant he was working mandatory overtime and missed a family event.
A long hiring process
While the only basic qualifications are being 21 or older and a high school diploma, the hiring process alone can take months to complete and that’s not counting the six-month-long police academy where new applicants complete their training.
The recruitment process begins with a physical ability test to make sure the applicant can run 500 yards, jump fences in an obstacle course, and drag a 165 lb “dummy.”
They’re then interviewed by a panel and the chief. If they pass the interviews then they go through the live scan process to make sure they haven’t been convicted of any felonies or anything that would prevent them from being hired. If they pass that then they have to fill out a lengthy personal history statement that logs everywhere they’ve lived, worked, previous relationships, medical history, etc.
Once they’ve completed that, applicants must complete a polygraph or lie detector test. Once passed, a background investigator goes into their personal history statement and investigates all answers. If that comes back clear then they must meet with a psychiatrist for a psych evaluation.
“A lot of folks, they don’t want to go through all that,” Cox said. “Some folks get washed out during the process and each one of those backgrounds costs money and time.”
There is then the six-month police academy which Cal Poly sponsors new recruits through. Currently, Cox said that they are sponsoring two new recruits through the academy which begins in January. He hopes they will be able to work for Cal Poly by the time they graduate.
Once they graduate, CPPD also pays for the new recruits’ uniforms which includes the ballistic vest.
CPPD is university funded under the “public safety” budget. In the 2022/23 fiscal year, Cal Poly allotted $4,938,580 towards public safety. This is $793,505 more than 2021/22. In that year, the university police were given just shy of a million dollars with the budget set at $964,214. This number pales in comparison to the San Luis Obispo Police Department budget in 2022 of $22.8 million.
“I can’t put anybody through the process unless I get their applications. Once I get their applications,” Cox said. “I make the phone calls, I schedule everything to get everything taken care of. And then it’s up to them to pass everything along the way.”
While Cox is excited about being able to sponsor new recruits through the academy, Williams believes they should be focusing their efforts on officers who already have 15 to 20 plus years of experience.
“When people come here straight out of an academy, we don’t have an opportunity to get them exposure to things that they need in order to develop professionally,” Williams said.
When asked how he would go about hiring if he were in charge, he said that he would send out a team to every agency and talk to them all in person about the advantages of working at a university, especially if it’s timed right in their career.
“If you could attract that person, they bring a lot to the table,” Williams said. “They can operate autonomously and reliably. You can expect them to do good, thorough investigations.”
Both Detective Williams and Deputy Chief Cox share how working at a university is different from a larger city. The crimes are less dangerous, the population served is mainly students and there are different rules and regulations that are followed.
At the end of the day, Deputy Cox believes it’s a “very noble and very rewarding profession.”
“It’s all about helping people in any way that we can,” Cox said.